London (England)
Great Britain - History - 1485-1603, Tudor period
Time travel
Shakespeare, William
Theatre
Death
Grief
Susan Cooper is the author of the classic five-book sequence The Dark is Rising, which won a Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor Award, and two Carnegie Honor Awards. Born in England, she was a reporter and feature writer for the London Sunday Timesbefore coming to live in the United States. Her writing includes books for children and adults, a Broadway play, films, and Emmy-nominated screenplays. Her most recent books for children are King of Shadows and Victory, and for adults a portrait of Revels founder Jack Langstaff called The Magic Maker. In 2012, Susan was given the Margaret A Edwards award and in 2013 she received the World Fantasy Award for life achievement. Her children’s novel Ghost Hawk was published in 2013. Susan lives and writes in Marshfield, Massachusetts.
With the death of his parents, Nathan Field has experienced tragedy in his own life. But it's a Shakespearean comedy that brings him to the New Globe, a reconstruction of the London theater where Shakespeare's plays were first performed. The American Company of Boys takes a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream to London, and they choose Nathan to be their Puck. Nathan is thrilled, but once in London, he wakes up to find himself in Elizabethan England. Here he rehearses the play in the original Globe, and plays opposite Shakespeare himself. Those around him believe that he has been sent from an exclusive boys' school, so they don't question his strange accent or manner. Although Nathan is nervous about what will happen to him next, he grows to love acting with Shakespeare's troupe. He even gets to perform for Queen Elizabeth!
With Shakespeare's help, Nathan finally begins to heal from the loss of his father. Shakespeare gives Nathan one of his own sonnets to keep, and promises to write a part for him. The day after Nathan performs for the queen, he wakes up in a 20th Century London hospital. It seems that he and an Elizabethan Nathan Field were switched—the Elizabethan Nathan was cured of Bubonic Plague in the London hospital while 20th Century Nathan took his bows with Shakespeare. Arby, his theater director, admits that he arranged the switch so that Shakespeare wouldn't be exposed to the plague and die before he had a chance to write many of his greatest plays. Although Nathan is sad to lose his opportunity to be with Shakespeare, Arby cheers him by showing him a character he had clearly inspired—the part of Ariel in The Tempest.
Scholastic
Shakespeare, London, Acting. Nat Field an American actor wins a place in the prestigious Company of Boys, which means he is to spend a month in London rehearsing and then putting on a Shakespearean play in the new Globe Theatre. He is excited to meet his fellow actors and the family with whom he is staying. But when he is transported back to London of four hundred years before, he is transfixed by the differences in the city and its inhabitants. Readers will be too, as Susan Cooper builds an image of Shakespeare's London with a meticulous eye for the detail of life four centuries ago. In Elizabethan times, Nat is befriended by Shakespeare himself and is at his side when brought into the presence of Queen Elizabeth herself, after appearing as Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream.
All the threads come together in an exciting conclusion to this wonderfully informative and inventive tale.
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